In Australia we’re culturally unable to call people by the name they introduce themselves as – short names need to be lengthened (usually by adding an ‘o’, ‘y’ or ‘a’ to the end of them) and long names need to be shortened (and then often have the an ‘o’, ‘y’ or ‘a’ added to them as well). Sometimes a variation of the name will do instead.

So if you call yourself Steve you’ll get called Steve-o. If you call yourself Steven you’ll get called Steve (or Stevey or Steve-o). If you’re Michael you’ll get Mike, but if you call yourself Mike you’ll probably get Mikey or Micky D or something.

I’m Luke, so I usually get called Lucas, Luca, Lukey, Lucky Luke or Cool Hand Luke (or Mothy). If you introduced yourself as Heath you’d get called Heathy or Heath-o or Heathsta or Heathmiester or something.

maybe not that bad, but....my mass transit infrastructure here is s~!+, and you can get shot on the train.
I bet Aubrey gets halfway across Albion before I get 20 stinkin' miles to work.

It takes me, on an average day, about 1 3/4 hours to get to work door-to-door. However, 20 minutes of that is a reasonably bracing walk to the station and 55 minutes or so is a nice bit of reading time on the train. It's the thirty minutes fighting my way across central London on the Tube I don't really like.

Sorry about my lack of posting recently - I've been packing in overtime before going on vacation. I'll be going back to Arizona for a week or so before taking Easter off back home in Norway; right now it's all about cleaning, packing and traveling, but I should be posting more or less normally again from Tuesday onwards.

Hey Aubrey, I have an 8-hour layover at Heathrow on Wednesday. My plane lands around 1300 and leave again at 1920. I can easily jump on the Tube and zip downtown, so do you want to meet up for some brews and a sarnie while I wait?

Apologies for my unexpected absence over the past few days. For those who haven’t heard, I abruptly lost my job earlier in the week. Times are going to be tough for a bit – my wife has just started working for three days a week after coming off 18 months maternity leave, so we fortunately have some income, but we pretty much burnt through our savings over the past 18 months so … hopefully I will find something soon. My industry is starting to be pretty badly affected by the financial uncertainty in Europe and elsewhere, but I’m sure something will come up. Circumstances may keep me away from Paizo more than normal though – not sure yet. Apologies in advance for any upcoming delays or slow downs. Please act for my character where required, or forgive slow GM updates as the case may be.

Anyway, this post is not meant to air my misery or garner sympathy, it is to express wonderment and heartfelt thanks to this fantastic community. Some far too generous person or persons who chose to stay anonymous have sent me a likewise far too generous gift certificate to help me keep up my AP subscription during this time. I can’t know for certain, but I suspect the person (or persons) is either a FAWTLy and / or in one of my pbp games. If you were behind this, thankyou so much, it is truly fantastic of you.

I'll be out of town tomorrow for a week. I'll continue to check in from my parent's house, but last time I vastly underestimated the costs for roaming data charges on simple web browsing while in Italy. I'll probably check in each evening rather than a few times a day via phone.

Hey all, many apologies for my unexpected absence. This whole job hunting thing is tedious and depressing, and I’ve found myself getting easily distracted from it. At the beginning of last week I decided to buckle down, promised myself that I would not log on to Paizo until I had sent out some letters, made some job applications and finished up my portfolio … well, what I had estimated I would get done in about two days stretched out to more than a week.

Anyway, I’m back now and will try to catch up soon. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Having been busy over the last week or so, I've popped back with another apology - I'm likely to be busy for the next week or so. I might be able to post on Tuesday, but otherwise I'll be AFK until next Friday. Sorry.

I'm working stupid hours with no days off at the moment. A quick tactical post is about all I can manage these days. Too tired to think straight. If that weren't the case I'd probably expand a bit on our predicament in RotRL, but at the moment all I can think of is that it is time to cast any hour per level buffs. Also that Camlo seemed to be referring the dragon's question to the hobgoblin chief, but from what I understood he isn't with us at all since he's back in the warren putting his foot down and cementing his new position. I would be happy to make Hudak look like the new hobgoblin chief though if that helps anyone in planning.

I'm probably going to be in much the same position until maybe mid July. With any luck on my part it will taper down sooner than that.

I've been working for an upscale catering company for the last year or so. These weeks the weather has become outdoor garden party season (in the evening) so there is an excess of that in addition to the usual US, British, and various other embassy parties. I'm in the middle of a two week stretch of 12-14 hour days right now. As a bonus my workspace is 40 C / 104 F by mid afternoon so I'm in a daze for half the day. :p

But yes- I can't complain excessively when so many people here don't have any work and I am banking up some savings at the moment.

I'm kinda piling away the OT at my job atm.......the other seasoned tech went to another job, and I have new kids with me; the Suits and Doc's have plenty of stuff to spam me with, so I'm grabbing all the cash I can. Helps to be really really busy atm. We just hired 2 new kids that rotate between us and another clinic BEFORE she quit, so we're kinda slammed.

Yep. Still in Athens. We are waiting it out for the moment, but the possibility of moving to the US is an ongoing conversation. We moved some savings to US banks in case Greece goes back to the drachma, but actually moving is a big deal and we won't do it unless we feel like we need to do so. Here we own an apartment and Jo has a pretty sweet job. We have a girl who we like a lot who comes to our house to play with Elliot while we are at work and we can afford to pay her.

If we move back to the US, it would probably be somewhere in the nyc metro area but we've talked about other places too. Still- rent and childcare are no joke. Jo might not be legal to work for the first 6 months or so, but then she'd have to hustle to find something in her broader area of study. Maybe teaching at a small college or something (she actually has a PhD in history of telenovelas and has worked in adapting them to foreign markets). Anyway- a lot of uncertainty. My contacts and connections are in Arkansas, but we aren't likely to move there. In nyc I have a few, but mostly related to my own work and not life in general. So for the moment we wait and see. And once this period of too much work is over we'll go to the beach and relax for a while.

Those are some hard choices. While the Greek economy is truly terrible, the US isn't so hot either. The reason we left for Norway was that my wife got cut down to three-day workweeks and I couldn't get any kind of work. Hell, I couldn't even get security jobs. Also, it took me 11 months to get my green card approved, and the application fees and medical examination required cost me almost $2K.